![]() There are some amusing behind-the-scenes tales, from the cast playing ‘hunt the squirrel’ during performances of Les Miserables, in which he starred as Marius in 1985, to Gillian Lynne instructing Roger Moore how to dance with the useful advice “nipples to the stars, bumholes to the back”. They litter his memoir, an intimate self-portrait delivered in the same chummy banter with which he speaks. To be honest, Aspects was never a great hit anyway.”īall is full of candid, off-the-cuff observations like this. No one wants to think about their teenage daughter being looked at by a dodgy member of the family.” Yes, but doesn’t the musical romanticise that idea? “Sure, but in the show that potential relationship doesn’t happen,” he says. But I think Aspects is simply too close to home for people. Now he says: “Actually, in raising Jenny’s age, I had worried we were sanitising the story. Marianka, says Ball in his book, had “put the cat among the pigeons”. The piece led to anxious meetings with the show’s producer Nica Burns, and the decision was made to raise Jenny’s age to 18. “Icky is the word people kept using,” he says.īall is certainly not one to shy away from critics: in 2022 Marianka Swain wrote a piece for this newspaper expressing strong misgivings about the proposed revival, calling the plot “queasy”. He thinks the show’s subject – which in its original version includes a romantic entanglement between a 15-year-old Jenny and Alex, her mother’s former lover – put people off. The production closed early after three months, felled by poor sales, and Ball is heartbroken. We are sitting in a pub in Barnes, near where he lives, to talk about his new memoir, Different Aspects, which splices his career to date with an account of his ill-fated attempt earlier this year to revive Aspects in the West End. Some singers hate being defined by the song that made their name. Love Changes Everything was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his 1989 musical Aspects of Love, which made Ball a star, and Ball once suggested that the second time the song is sung in the show, the melody ought to go up at the end. ![]() But I do have an instinct.” Instead, he learns by ear. The man who had a smash hit single in 1989 with Love Changes Everything has had precisely two singing lessons in his entire life. ![]() ![]() But ask me what a baritone is and I haven’t got a clue.” I can see which notes are longer than others. “I can see where the melody goes up and down. Michael Ball is describing how he reads music. ![]()
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